College personal statement

    My mother country is China, Canton is where I was born. When I was 13, my whole family immigrated to United States of America, but they don’t often stay for a long time. Although all of my family members have green cards, but my parents and my brother stay in China for works and school most of the time in the year, and they just come once a year. I had Chinese education for 13 years before I immigrated. I am proud of what I am. Ever since i was young, my parents wanted me to learn about Chinese culture as much as I can, which drived me tired often. I have learned how to write the Chinese Calligraphy, play the piano and chess. I spent hard works on each of them and I got awards. I had passed on the level 6 test in piano when I was in 7th grade. I had many awards for chess and Calligraphy that I won at the competitions in China.  I enjoyed my tough life in China for 13 years, and now I am looking forward for my future.
    Because English is my second language, I have a hard time on studying English. Sometimes I feel left out. I recall to my first day of America School, I was an eighth grader in Lincoln Middle school.  The only words I could say or understand are “Hi” and “thank you”, nothing else. One of the reasons is because my English teachers in China had their accents in English. This impact me had a hard time catching up on what other people were speaking. Everything is turning in a good way after the first half of the year, at least I could barely follow each word that came out of my teachers’ mouths.I took the adjustment test and tried to get into Geometry in my 8th grade, the officials in the office put me back to Algebra 1 even though i got an A on the test. Their reasons were just they did not think I will be able to catch up in Geometry since there are many word problems, and they wanted me to retake Algebra 1 even though I knew all the stuff in that book. At that moment, I noticed if i don't improve my English, I won’t be able to fulfill my dream. Later the year, I became a tutor and helped 6th and 7th graders in Math after school. Not only I could get community services hours from doing so, I could also learn more English by socialize.
    My dream is getting into a good UC, by that, I don’t mean they have to be super nice, I just want an UC that fits my major well. I love math, so I think I am going for mathemathic. I also know I have to improve my other grade on different subject by improving my English. Therefore, I am looking for more opportunities for more activities that involved socialize.










    Every Saturday, I go to FCSN for volunteering. I played sports with some mental illness kids and also take care of them. I like my job. By the time I take care of those kids, I learn that I have to be patient for everything before it comes success. The kids there always have some weird action, and their brains are slower than normal people. The leader of the program always tells us that there are still some possibilities for them to turn well and get rid of the issues they are having. Right, I became patient to those kids, I teach them how to play Pingpong, how to do a jumping jet, and how to be respectful to others. Because they are kids, and most of them are under 10, so they are innocent inside. I also learned that rushing is not the good way to finish a job as always. Once I yield at a kid who is as tall as me, but he was as tall as me. He cried so badly from my criticisms. I really felt regret of criticizing him just because he tried to messed around with me. They are kids, no matter how big their size is, they still have a small heart which is easy to break down. And it is my job to keep it safe or fix it.
    The hardest part of this job is that I need to teacher those kids the movements to play pingpong. Often time they would run away from me because they think they are not able to do it or they just don’t want to do it. So my first job is to chase those kids and get them in position. I mean it is challenge to get them on position and not to run away without yielding at them. First of all, I need to hold their shoulders and teach them the movement to hit the pingpong ball. The racket needs to be oblique because that way it is easier to hit the ball back. We always practice the same move over and over again to let them have a view of how you play pingpongSecond of all, I need to serve the balls to those kids in order to hit it back. They always miss the ball or hit it out. Some of the kids would give me a sad face. Eventually I need to comfort them and give them another easier serve. It takes skills to finish an hour practice.
    I think this volunteering job had impact me in a good way. I learned how to be patient to everything and every person, and should be optimistic to whatever that is going to happen to me. Nothing will be perfect, especially at the beginning. Our lives need decisions and improvements. By the time goes on, I feel confident to my future.
   

Final Draft of the book, "Crank" QUESTION #5

      The book, “Crank” described Kristina as a smart girl at school, but she had challenged many kinds of problems at school and her family. There are so many saddness thing happen to her: her parents got divorced when she was 5 years old, then she lived with her mom and her step-father. Unfortunately, as time goes on, there are many things happened to Kristina and changed her personality and characteristics. The purpose for the author of writing this book is that she tried to express the idea of influence from someone’s opinion is able to change a person’s fate in both ways.

     Kristina tries very hard at school to be perfect, but inside of her mind, she wants a perfect family instead of getting perfect grade in school. Her desire is to live in a family with her siblings and her parents who actually have the blood relationship with her. Unfortuanely, her parents got divorced when she was still young, and she found herself there is no way to keep a contact with her father. Thus Kristina asked to go to her father's house for a while. When Kristina went to her father and planned to live with him for a short period, her father did not care about her so much. Not only because he got so much work to do and also he does not consider Kristina as his "daughter". Thus he left her at home by herself alone. This make Kristina feels like her father tries to ignore her:

"Work?" "You have heard of work" "You couldn't take one day off?" "You don't know my boss" "Does he know about me?" "She knows you're here." "Your daughter comes to visit..." "She doesn't know." "Know what?" "That you're my daughter." "Who am  I then?" "A long-lost relative." (P30)

     Since after the divorced, Kristina's father lives pretty far away from where her mom lives, so it is not so easy to have a conversation with her father. Although Kristina tried very hard to get some free days hang out with her father, but he told Kristina that work is more important than her. Kristina feels pissed off of what her father did because she begged her mother for so long in order to get the permission of going to her father's house, and now her father expected her as a "long lost relative". I think her father is pretty rude, and it just hurts a high school student's feeling. Kristina was dissapointed at what his father did to her. The writter, Ellen used many adjective words to describe the change of Kristina's emotions. And later on the book, she talks about her marriage in her life. When people are putting a bad mood onto something, things would always turn worse. 

    After Kritina knows she is pregnant, she was trying to hide the fact and not to tell anyone, not even her husband. The reason why is that she does not want to distract him from his job, and also she was thinking if she should tell her parents. Once she does not feel well because she was pregnant for six months, and Adam was driving her home from a party. While Adam was driving, he told Kritina that she should tell her parents about the baby, and also fix the relationship:

"He suggested, Maybe you should talk to your mom"(P501)

            Then Kristina replied:

"What was he thinking? How could i talk to her? We hadn't really talked in years. What would I tell her now?" (P502)

         From their conversation, I can tell that Kristina was not willing to tell her parents that she is pregnant, because she felt strange to how selfish they actually are. Adam knows Kristina is just scared  to talk to her parents, so he presses the number to her parents, and give the phone to her after connected it. Her parents feel so surprise and happy after Kristina told them she is pregnant. And they started building up their relationship because of the baby.Sometimes, things will just get easier if people give more forgiveness and tolerant to each other. "I told you once before that life is full of choices, sometimes, good or bad, hard or easy, we make the right choices. When I told my mom, she cried and cursed. Then she softened and thanked me for honoring"(P525) This quote shows that if Kristina and her mom have known the misunderstanding before they are being ignoring to each other, things will get easier. Oftentime, forgiveness and tolerant could make life easier, and more success, espectially in people's relationship.

         In this book, the writer uses a lot of adjectives to describe the changing of every character's emotion, and also their thoughts. The writer also shows sometimes being stubborn would miss many chances. Throughout the experiences that Kristina had from her childhood to her motherhood period, the books shows it is very important to give understanding and forgiveness to the people who are around you, because everyone make mistakes, you cannot expect someone being perfect at you. There is no way to do so just because this is how the cycle works. There are many big lessons in the book that are relating to our life.
        All in all, I think the writer expresses the ideas of family issues by writing this book and how we can treat the problems. Sometimes saddness things just happen, and we cannot stop them. Instead of complaining whose fault is it, we should rather look forward, and find out the solutions for it. Like in Kristina's case, if Adam did not make the phone call for her, she would not know it was a misunderstanding betwwen her and her parents, and she would not be able to know the truth. People sometims might just get mad and make some misunderstandings for no reasons, but then it will cause more troubles and problems, and hurting people around them. If we can start to learn how to forgive and tolerant to people, there would be less misunderstanding between each other; if there are less misunderstanding in our life, things will just become wonderful. Each good and bad choice in one's life is  effecting and changing their fate.

Comments for rough dradt

    Here are the comments I wrote for Vanessa Berrior, shiyun yang,  Jay Pan
Vanessa:
Woow! Such a specific explanation! I like your thesis statements and some explanations, which make me have a good preview of the book. I think you need more quotes, and you also can pull out what event had actually happened during the game. And you need to cut the first paragraph of the second part of the book, it seemed like it is the second intro paragraph. Overall, it is pretty good, and I am looking for more deatails of the story on the final draft.
shiyun:
mhmm..I would say the same thing which I comment at Vanessa's post-- I think you need more details on what events had actually happened in the story. On your essay, it mostly focus on what is your opinion-- I am not saying it is unnessary, but maybe you could add more samples to support your thesis. By the way, you have strong supports of your quotes and your commentary. Overall, your essay seems great
Jay:
The third comments for "Hunger Game"!!
Well, I think your essay is going on a good way. You have thesis statements, strong quotes, transitions and supports. Like what David said↑, you need to make a better intro and conclusion. Anyway, I think your essay is ready to go